"But we’ve never seen a bird book like this one. Oh no. I’m quite confident of that. Because Mr. Gill stuck his camera into some pretty nasty and dodgy crevices. Under girders, around steel beams. Up where these grayscale flying rats reside, when they’re not busy pooping on statues and cooing you to sleep at night." - Jonathan Blaustein

Get Pumped on Stephen Gill's Photos Developed in Energy Drinks by Kaeli Kelleher

In a recent experiment, Best Before End, Gill played on our country’s addiction to energy drinks and brought them somewhere they’ve never before been consumed. Without any resemblance to traditional means, he developed his photographs in drinks such as Red Bull, Rockstar and N-Gine. The energy drink immersion allowed him to move each layer of the film and later finalize the effect with a brush. This technique, when combined with placing objects inside of his camera, resulted in a trippy-twist on his urban landscapes.

It’s hard to find a photographer quite so synonymous with London as Stephen Gill. Now, after over a decade of working in the heart of the East End and producing some of the era’s most iconic projects, the creator of Hackney Wick has decided to relocate to Sweden. During a quick six-day trip back to London, Gill invited us into his studio-cum-archive to talk about his practice, his books and what he plans to do in Scandinavia.

As a major force in British photography Stephen Gill has become known for his innovative, original, and quite quirky photobooks. Since his first book, A Book of Field Studies, was published 2004 he has produced and published over 25 photographic projects up until today (2013). In this retrospective exhibition, Best Before End, more than 13 projects, made over a period of 14 years, are included and exhibited. The choice of theme and technique vary widely from the different series – but as a common nominee, they are all exploring the multifaceted area in and around Hackney, East London.

Photographer Stephen Gill: The Devil in the Detail by Tamsin Blanchard

The morning I meet the photographer Stephen Gill, in his studio in an old warehouse in Bethnal Green, east London, with its urban view of tangled railway lines and, in the distance, the shiny towers of Canary Wharf, he has already been out with his camera since 7am. He was on the hunt for a tawny owl and her owlets, which he had spied a few days earlier in a north London park.

For quite a few years I've been making photographic work in the London borough of Hackney, where I live. Recently, I've been For quite a few years I've been making photographic work in the London borough of Hackney, where I live. Recently, I've been trying to photograph not just what the place looks like, but also trying to include as much as I can of what it feels like. I started collecting little bits of stuff from actual places, and then putting them inside the camera.

Stephen Gill, 1971, UK, is an experimental, conceptual and documentary photographer. In 2005 he founded his publishing company in order to gain maximum control over the publication process of his books. He has released an impressive amount of books. For him a book is not merely a vessel or a shell in which to house and show his photographs, it should be the finished expression of the images.

Stephen Gill (b. 1971) became interested in photography in his early childhood, thanks to his father and interest in insects and initial obsession with collecting bits of pond life to inspect under his microscope. Gill has emerged as a major force in British photography; his photographic work has been exhibited and held in collections at many international galleries and museums.

Stephen Gill seems like one of the happiest adventurers out in the world playing with photography today. Still at a young age, he has already written and edited award-winning books. He’s had great commercial success, lots of exposure, international shows, and always seems to be doing something new and exciting and — different.

The photographs in this series were made in Brighton and Hove during 2010. They feature objects and creatures that I scooped up from the local surroundings and introduced into the body of my camera.I hoped through this approach to encourage the spirit of the place to clamber aboard the images and be encapsulated in the film emulsion, like objects embedded in amber. My aim was to evoke the feeling of the area at the same time as describing its appearance.

Stephen Gill attaches a camera to a long pole to probe the bleak hide-outs of London's most maligned birds. If Iain Sinclair has become Hackney’s unauthorised biographer, Stephen Gill is its alternative archaeologist, using his camera to peel away the layers that other photographers either don’t see, or don’t care about. He has always been interested in the underside of things.

The photographic voice of the English photographer Stephen Gill always has a playfully inventive ring. His book ‘Hackney Wick’ (Nobody, 2005), named after an area in east London where the photographs were made, is comprised of pictures taken with a cheap plastic lens camera he bought at a flea market in Hackney Wick for 50 pence.

Two years ago, Stephen Gill, a London-based photographer, purchased 9,000 negatives on eBay that were said to contain images of London’s East End in the 1950s. Gill was hoping the negatives would document the area’s vibrant street life. Instead, there were thousands and thousands of pictures of East Enders on their wedding days.

Gill's new book is Archaeology in Reverse, and its 100 uncaptioned images were taken on the same cheap camera. For about a year - between the beginning of work and the completion of the fence - Gill haunted the Lower Lea on bike and on foot, watching as the first stages of the Olympic vision were rolled out. The result is a remarkable book that, in Gill's phrase, records the "traces and clues of things to come". His subject is the imminence of mass construction, rather than its realisation.

Stephen Gill is a member of that recent urban tribe, the yellow-jacketed Hackney centaurs: part-man, part-bicycle. He roams the canal system, the backwaters of the River Lea, breathing hard, in the reverie of a doomed landscape. Travelling-shot visions of blight and sturdy nature - bindweed, teasel, mutating buddleia - keep him afloat; until he sees the site that will become his next project. Bike padlocked, he walks and watches.